"For 20 years we've been reactionary - throw the book at 'em, a John Wayne mentality," she said. "I don't think it's about being tough or soft on crime, it's about being wise."

When asked recently about Oakland's robbery rate, which at 10.9 robberies per 1,000 residents is the highest in the nation, what she said was neither smart nor wise.

"We have a lot fewer jobs for adults so kids experience a lot more lack, so they are not able to get things," she said, noting that some turn to robbery to get money. "Really what they are after is really basic things - shoes, jackets. The things these kids are buying with money from stolen things are not flashy things.

"They are buying just staple goods. People are stealing credit cards, and they are buying groceries. They are buying at Babies R Us."

Those statements, published in The Chronicle on Monday, were based on conversations she'd had with a number of the Oakland Police Department's command staff, she told me.

I tried to reach the police officials she named, but got only one of them: Capt. Anthony Toribio, who commands the North Oakland police district. He had no idea what McElhaney was talking about.

"We have asked them (suspects) why they commit the robberies, and the reply from one of them was because it was easy," Toribio told me.

Another police official whom she had not named, Oakland police Sgt. Arturo Bautista, said, "I can't imagine a commander attributing robbery and theft to those reasons."

But, he added, "There may be a specific incident of petty theft where that has happened, because there is that element of it, and those things do happen."

He's right, but there's a difference between petty theft and robbery.

For many people in and out of Oakland, Gibson-McElhaney's comments were a rationalization of crime, and reinforced the belief that Oakland city leaders lack the political resolve or the individual courage required to adopt much-needed crime-reduction policies in the face of unrelenting criticism from antipolice activists.

In any context, attributing altruistic motives to people who prey on others sends the wrong message.

To be fair, Gibson-McElhaney said she made her comments when asked by a Chronicle reporter about increased robberies tied to gentrification in the city.

Her concern was that the media - and society - didn't weigh in on robberies until white hipsters became more frequent targets.

"I reject the notion that just because white folks have moved to Oakland they are being targeted for crime," she said. "The majority of crimes, whether it's robbery or murder, are being committed against black folks, by black folks."

But white hipsters are being targeted for crimes, right along with the rest of us, white or not.

Pointing out that newer arrivals of any ilk are now on the radar screens of robbers doesn't diminish the impact of crimes taking place in Oakland's predominantly African American neighborhoods.

Pointing out that street robberies of electronic gear has largely replaced street drug sales as a way to make money doesn't make people feel less sympathetic toward African American victims of crime.

Like many of her colleagues, Gibson-McElhaney believes the city cannot adequately address the crime problem until it can understand the true nature and motivations for crime

We have criminologists. We have sociologists. What we don't have, but desperately need, are a lot more police officers and elected officials who can adopt effective strategies to reduce crime without invoking their own political preferences.

Oakland residents don't need a plan that passes the council's political litmus test.